Thread on Arstechnica forum: https://arstechnica.com/civis/threads/editor%E2%80%99s-note-...
The retracted article: https://web.archive.org/web/20260213194851/https://arstechni...
[0] https://bsky.app/profile/benjedwards.com/post/3mewgow6ch22p
[1] your mileage may vary on how much you believe it and how much slack you want to cut him if you do
People are making a bigger deal about it than this one article or site warrants because of ongoing discourse about whether LLM tech will regularly and inevitably lead to these mistakes. We're all starting to get sick of hearing about it, but this keeps happening.
The problem is people on the Internet, hn included, always howl for maximalist repercussions every time. ie someone should be fired. I don't see that as a healthy or proportionate response, I hope they just reinforce that policy and everyone keeps their jobs and learns a little.
Correct, I only mentioned the blame-free post-mortem thing to head off the usual excuses, as a shorthand general approach. It has merits in many/most circumstances.
> I don't see that as a healthy or proportionate response,
Again, correct. It's only appropriate in cases of malice.
My assumption is that one of the authors used something like Perplexity to gather information about what happened. Since Shambaugh blocks AI company bots from accessing his blog, it did not get actual quotes from him, and instead hallucinated them.
They absolutely should have validated the quotes, but this isn't the same thing as just having an LLM write the whole article.
I also think this "apology" article sucks, I want to know specifically what happened and what they are doing to fix it.
"Ars Technica does not permit the publication of AI-generated material unless it is clearly labeled and presented for demonstration purposes. That rule is not optional, and it was not followed here."
They aren't allowed to use the tool, so there was clearly intention.
Seems like ordinary, everyday corner cutting to me. I don't think that rises to the level of malice. Maybe if we go through their past articles and establish it as a pattern of behavior.
That's not a defence to be clear. Journalists should be held to a higher standard than that. I wouldn't be surprised if someone with "senior" in their title was fired for something like this. But I think this malice framing is unhelpful to understanding what happened.
By submitting this work they warranted that it was their own. Requiring an explicit false statement to qualify as a lie excludes many of the most harmful cases of deception.
You can absolutely lie through omission, I just don't see evidence that that is a better hypothesis than corner cutting in this particular case. I am open to more evidence coming out. I wouldn't be shocked to hear in a few days that there was other bad behavior from this author. I just don't see those facts in evidence, at this moment. And I think calling it malice departs from the facts in evidence.
Presumably keeping to the facts in evidence is important to us all, right? That's why we all acknowledge this as a significant problem?
Assuming malice without investigating is itself careless.
we're really at the point where people are just writing off a journalist passing off their job to a chatgpt prompt as though that's a normal and defensible thing to be doing
Honestly I'm just not astounded by that level of incompetence. I'm not saying I'm impressed or that's it's okay. But I've heard much worse stories of journalistic malpractice. It's a topical, disposable article. Again, that doesn't justify anything, but it doesn't surprise me that a short summary of a series of forum exchanges and blog posts was low effort.
I also do not believe this was a genuine result of incompetence. I entertained that it is possible, but that would be the most charitable view possible, and I don't think the benefit of doubt is earned in this case. They routinely cover LLM stories, the retracted article being about that very subject matter, so I have very little reason to believe they are ignorant about LLM hallucinations. If it were a political journalist or something, I would be more inclined to give the ignorance defense credit, but as it is we have every reason to believe they know what LLMs are and still acted with intention, completely disregarding the duty they owe to their readers to report facts.
That's more or less what I mean. It was only a few notches above listicle to begin with. I don't think they intended to fabricate quotes. I think they didn't take the necessary time because it's a low-stakes, low-quality article to begin with. With a short shelf life, so it's only valuable if published quickly.
> I also do not believe this was a genuine result of incompetence.
So your hypothesis is that they intentionally made up quotes that were pretty obviously going to be immediately spotted and damage their career? I don't think you think that, but I don't understand what the alternative you're proposing is.
I also feel compelled to point out you've abandoned your claim that the article was generated. I get that you feel passionately about this, and you're right to be passionate about accuracy, but I think that may be leading you into ad-hoc argumentation rather than more rational appraisal of the facts. I think there's a stronger and more coherent argument for your position that you've not taken the time to flesh out. That isn't really a criticism and it isn't my business, but I do think you ought to be aware of it.
I really want to stress that I don't think you're wrong to feel as you do and the author really did fuck up. I just feel we, as a community in this thread, are imputing things beyond what is in evidence and I'm trying to push back on that.
> I also feel compelled to point out you've abandoned your claim that the article was generated.
As you've pointed out, neither of us has a crystal ball, and I can't definitively prove the extent of their usage. However, why would I have any reason to believe their LLM usage stops merely at fabricating quotes? I think you are again engaging in the most charitable position possible, for things that I think are probably 98 or 99% likely to be the result of malicious intent. It seems overwhelmingly likely to me that someone who prompts an LLM to source their "facts" would also prompt an LLM to write for them - it doesn't really make sense to be opposed to using an LLM to write on your behalf but not be opposed to it sourcing stories on your behalf. All the more so if your rationale as the author is that the story is unimportant, beneath you, and not worth the time to research.
Yeah, that's accurate. I will turn a dime the moment I receive evidence that this was routine for this author or systemic for Ars. But yes, I'm assuming good faith (especially on Ars' part), and that's generally how I operate. I guess I'm an optimist, and I guess I can't ask you to be one.
He admits to using an AI tool, says he was sick and did dumb things. He does clear Kyle (the other author).
As far as I can tell, the pulled article had no obvious tells and was caught only because the quotes were entirely made up. Surely it's not the only one, though?
In the comments I found a link to the retracted article: https://arstechnica.com/ai/2026/02/after-a-routine-code-reje.... Now that I know which article, I know it's one I read. I remember the basic facts of what was reported but I don't recall the specifics of any quotes. Usually quotes in a news article support or contextualize the related facts being reported. This non-standard retraction leaves me uncertain if all the facts reported were accurate.
It's also common to provide at least a brief description of how the error happened and the steps the publication will take to prevent future occurrences.. I assume any info on how it happened is missing because none of it looks good for Ars but why no details on policy changes?
Edit to add more info: I hadn't yet read the now-retracted original article on achive.org. Now that I have I think this may be much more interesting than just another case of "lazy reporter uses LLM to write article". Scott, the person originally misquoted, also suspects something stranger is going on.
> "This blog you’re on right now is set up to block AI agents from scraping it (I actually spent some time yesterday trying to disable that but couldn’t figure out how). My guess is that the authors asked ChatGPT or similar to either go grab quotes or write the article wholesale. When it couldn’t access the page it generated these plausible quotes instead, and no fact check was performed." https://theshamblog.com/an-ai-agent-published-a-hit-piece-on...
My theory is a bit different than Scott's: Ars appears to use an automated tool which adds text links to articles to increase traffic to any related articles already on Ars. If that tool is now LLM-based to allow auto-generating links based on concepts instead of just keywords, perhaps it mistakenly has unconstrained access to changing other article text! If so, it's possible the author and even the editors may not be at fault. The blame could be on the Ars publishers using LLMs to automate monetization processes downstream of editorial. Which might explain the non-standard vague retraction. If so, that would make for an even more newsworthy article that's directly within Ars' editorial focus.
It's good to issue a correction, and in this case to retract the article. But it doesn't really give me confidence going forward, especially where this was flagged because the misquoted person raised the issue. It's not like Ars' own processes somehow unearthed this error.
It makes me think I should get in the habit of reading week-old Ars articles, whose errors would likely have been caught by early readers.
It might be even worse (and more interesting) than that. I just posted a sister response outlining why I now suspect the fabrication may have actually been caused by Ars' own process. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47027370. Hence, the odd non-standard retraction.
When I wrote my post above, I hadn't yet read the original article on achive.org. Now that I know the article actually links to the claimed original sources on Scott's blog and Github for all the fabricated quotes, how this could have happened is even more puzzling. Now I think this may be much more interesting than just another case of "lazy reporter uses LLM to write article".
Ars appears to use an automated tool which adds text links to articles to increase traffic to any related articles already on Ars. If that tool is now LLM-based to allow auto-generating links based on concepts instead of just keywords, perhaps it mistakenly has unconstrained access to changing other article text! If so, it's possible the author and even the editors may not be at fault. The blame could be on the Ars publisher's using LLM's to automate monetization processes downstream of editorial. Which might explain the non-standard vague retraction. If so, that would make for an even more newsworthy article that's directly within Ars' editorial focus.
They need to enumerate the specific details they fudged.
They need to correct any inaccuracies.
Otherwise, there is little reason to trust Arse Technica in the future.
Ars Technica makes up quotes from Matplotlib maintainer; pulls story
A lot of the results would be predictable partisan takes and add no value. But in a case like this where the whole conversation is public, the inclusion of fabricated quotes would become evident. Certain classes of errors would become lucid.
Ars Technica blames an over reliance on AI tools and that is obviously true. But there is a potential for this epistemic regression to be an early stage of spiral development, before we learn to leverage AI tools routinely to inspect every published assertion. And then use those results to surface false and controversial ones for human attention.
I unsubscribed (just the free rss) regardless of their retraction.
If they had named the people involved, the criticism would be, "they aren't taking responsibility, they're passing the buck to these employees."
It is definitely not a good look for a "Senior AI Reporter."
If the coverage of those risks brought us here, of what use was the coverage?
Another day, another instance of this. Everyone who warned that AI would be used lazily without the necessary fact-checking of the output is being proven right.
Sadly, five years from now this may not even result in an apology. People might roll their eyes at you for correcting a hallucination they way they do today if you point out a typo.
I think this track is unavoidable. I hate it.
They admit wrong doing here and point to multiple policy violations.
It’s not optional, but wasn’t followed, with zero repercussions.
Sounds optional.
If they had waited until Monday the thread would be filled with comments criticizing them for waiting that long.
> we probably won't have something to report back until next week.
The forum thread is locked.
If they felt the need to post something in a hurry on the weekend, then the message should acknowledge that, and acknowledge that "investigation continues" or something like that
What would you have liked to see them announce?
And yes, it looks like Ars is still investigating (bluesky post by one of the authors of the retracted article) https://bsky.app/profile/kyleor.land/post/3mewdlloe7s2j
That's not how it works. It's standard op nowadays to lock out terminated employees before they even walk in the door.
Sometimes they just snail mail the employee's personal possessions from their desk.
Moreover, Ars Technica publishes articles every day. Aside from this editor's note, they published one article today and three articles yesterday. So "holiday weekend" is practically irrelevant in this case.
Some places.
> It's standard op nowadays to lock out terminated employees before they even walk in the door.
Some places.
You're speaking very authoritatively about what's "standard", in a way that strongly implies you think this is either the way absolutely everyone does it, or the way it should be done.
It's standard op nowadays to acknowledge that your experiences are not universal, and that different organizations operate differently.
Neither. I just meant it's common.
The comment I replied to said, "they may need to wait for office staff to return to begin the process."
I think the commonality of the practice shows that Ars Technica doesn't need to wait for office staff to return to begin the process, if office staff is even gone in the first place (again, Ars Technica appears to be open for business today). There's certainly no legal reason why they'd need to wait to fire people.
Does Ars Technica have a "policy" to only fire people on weekdays? I doubt it. Imagine reading that in the employee handbook.
Besides, President's Day is not a holiday that businesses necessarily close for. Indeed, many retailers are open and have specific President's Day sales.
They normally aren't, they probably write the stories on the weekdays and prepare them to automatically publish over the weekend, with only a skeletal staff to moderate and repair the website. Legal, HR, and other office staff probably only work weekdays, or are contracted out to external firms.
Their CEO posted a quick note on their forums the other day about this which implied they don't normally work on holidays and it would take until Tuesday for a response.
Judging from today's editors note, if things need to happen more quickly, then they do.
It's such a cliche that they should have apologized in a human enough way that it didn't sound like the apology was AI generated as well. It's one way they could have earned back a small bit of credibility.
> Kudos to ARS for catching this and very publicly stating it.
> Thank you for upholding your journalistic standards. And a note to our current administration in DC - this is what transparency looks like.
> Thank you for upholding the standards of journalism we appreciate at ars!
> Thank you for your clarity and integrity on your correction. I am a long time reader and ardent supporter of Ars for exactly these reasons. Trust is so rare but also the bedrock of civilization. Thank you for taking it seriously in the age of mass produced lies.
> I like the decisive editorial action. No BS, just high human standards of integrity. That's another reason to stick with ARS over news feeds.
There is some criticism, but there is also quite a lot of incredible glazing.
> If there is a thread for redundant comments, I think this is the one. I, too, will want to see substantially more followup here, ideally this week. My subscription is at stake.
> I know Aurich said that a statement would be coming next week, due to the weekend and a public holiday, so I appreciate that a first statement came earlier. [...] Personally, I would expect Ars to not work with the authors in the future
> (from Jim Salter, a former writer at Ars) That's good to hear. But frankly, this is still the kind of "isolated incident" that should be considered an immediate firing offense.
> Echoing others that I’m waiting to see if Ars properly and publicly reckons with what happened here before I hit the “cancel subscription” button